“Some may say I couldn’t sing, but none may say I didn’t sing.” – Florence Foster Jenkins.

Writing and I? We get along pretty well. We have in jokes about apostrophe abuse, sometimes giggle at typo’s together and generally tend to find ourselves on the same page. Writing comes pretty fluently, because I make sure I have enough time in my life to think, and writing is merely a symbolic expression of thoughts isn’t it? And so it stands that cohesive, interesting, humorous, heartfelt writing is really just cohesive, interesting, humorous, heartfelt thoughts is it not? 

As it stands, writing and I? We’re about square.

But music?

Golly.

Gee whizz, I mean… shucks.

I uh… I get bashful just thinking about music. If writing is an old friend… then music is the dreamboat sitting in the corner across a dimly lit room I spend the entire evening wishing I had the gumption to string a sentence together around, but more likely end up making origami fighter plane out of a napkin…. and wondering if he and I were paper people he might like to travel round the world on a paper napkin plane with me. Pipe dreams.

Music mystifies me. I even try to avoid writing about music, in part for fear of sounding like a nob… but also because I’m terrified of becoming overly analytical or critical of something I love so dear. I’ve seen people stop liking music, stop listening to music, and even grow to hate it… because they’ve tried to pick it apart and understand it too much. I don’t want to pull music apart at its seams, nor do I want to create a pathetic, pretensious attitude towards something that leaves me, in a word, spellbound. To be honest, I just want to love it more and let it be whatever it wishes… metal, folk, pop, rap, Icelandic nose-flute… I don’t care… I want to listen to it… even if I don’t love all of it… I want to let it be itself – and encourage people that love the music that I don’t like, to love that music all the more, because there’s a song for everyone I think.

So why exactly, with all this nervousness and trepidation then you ask… am I writing about music?

Well, because sometimes I write songs… and I’d like to write more… because since I was a little kid… all I wanted to be was someone that sang. And the other night, as I walked six kilometers in the freezing cold at 2:30am through Melbourne… I had an idea. Not a hundred per cent original… but original enough that it might just do the trick.

Last November I wrote a novel, fifty thousand words in thirty days. It was hard, and I almost quit several times… but I did it. And now, forever, if I never achieve another thing – I can say that at twenty one, I wrote a novel. Some of it is stuff so poorly written not even Shakespare would wipe his Shakes-rear with it, but my grandkids will be proud, and though the novel is not published nor edited… it made me love writing more than ever, and I have had some incredible opportunities since. And as I walked… and wondered in those wee hours of the morning… I thought maybe… I could apply a similar idea to my music.

What if… I recorded a song every single day for thirty days… I wonder what might happen to my songwriting… I wonder what might happen to my guitar playing… I wonder how my voice might change… I wonder…

So today began the month of June, and I haven’t got much planned for June.
So, I’m going to record a song a day for the entire of this month. Thirty songs in thirty days, uploaded onto the Internet (when I figure out how to do that I’ll keep you posted… or maybe more likely popped onto a CD and dropped in peoples mail boxes) to float out somewhere in the cables and wire clutter bouncing off sattelites.

I imagine, and hope, like the novel project… that some/ most of these songs will be utter rubbish, and that you and I will be able to to cringe and laugh at them some day in the future like a pair of op-shop undies. But more than that, I hope it makes me love music more, and write more music that I love, because at twenty-two… I still, more than anything else just want to be someone that sings, and I figure in a months time I can either have not recorded thirty demos… or I can have thirty demos, and to me… the latter is infinitely more appealing than the former.

I might record some outside, an I’ll hopefully record some with friends – if you’d like to be involved, get in touch – seriously! Most will be on my iPhone, because I don’t own fancy sound gear and can’t be bothered with it… and also because perhaps Steve Jobs will endorse me if it’s an “i,” related project. If you know Steve, please forward this to him. If you are Steve Jobs, I’d love one of those old black Mac Books. Then I can make Black Books jokes a lot – and I like making jokes.

So enjoy, laugh at me (I certainley will be) listen, nag me about how many songs I’ve done so far so that I keep doing it (that’s why I’m writing this… because if people know I’ve said I want to do something… hopefully the pride in me will see me through when the passion in me gives way) and share with anyone with a pair of spare ears. Because music is meant to be shared in, and I’m dirt tired of playing to the brick-a-brack in my room in between dreaming of doing more music and making origami napkin aeroplanes.
 

Wish me luck,

Catherine.
 

PS. 
Mr. Jobs, may I call you Steve? Well, Steve, if you are reading this ever – I’m not joking at all about getting a free Mac book. I think you probably have spares, and I have approximatley none, in fact; I have exactly none – no approximations about it. And I feel like the great disparity between our Mac quantities could be lessened a little.